Surreptitious Opinionation

Last night I learned something about each of my parents that I never knew before. Mom worked on the McGovern campaign and Dad took a gymnastics class in college. Heh. Neat. =)

It’s actually kind of easy to have an inferiority concept with respect to my dad. He’s owned his own medical practice for about 20 years at this point, was assistant county coroner, and later county health commissioner, and is now chief medical officer for the ohio national guard and has been repeatedly recommended for promotion to 1 star general. Oh yeah, and for a trump in my suit, he built an opamp in a circuits class in college. I have never understood how the circuitry on one of those suckers worked.

A potato, cauliflower soup.

boil potatoes and cauliflower. Saute garlic and leeks, add some basil. Combine. Add soymilk and earth balance. let simmer for awhile. Season to taste.

The soup is not viscous, but it is tasty.

Did the parallel bars for the first time ever on monday. Just shoulder swings (supporting yourself on the bars with the hands and upper arms, arms roughly parallel to the bar, as opposed to the more advanced ones, where you support yourself with your hands only, and they’re perpendicular to the bar), and some dips. Well, the shoulder swings had some consequences, detailed in the following pics.

cut for the easily disgusted

long summary with pictures

blk@AND(share&enjoy@AND)» [19:14:03 grumble grumble grumble] |
hm, is Nat my FRIEND?
tmaher@ECE(share&enjoy@AND)» [19:14:31 exempli gratia]
I’d call him more of a “nemesis”, actually.
tmaher@ECE(share&enjoy@AND)» [19:14:47 exempli gratia]
With “archfiend” tendencies.
magus@CS(share&enjoy@AND)» [19:15:15 freak gasoline fight accident]
thank you, tom. I’ve been trying to put forth that extra archfiend effort recently, and I’m flattered that you noticed.
tmaher@ECE(share&enjoy@AND)» [19:15:53 exempli gratia]
Oh, your work with the Western Pennsylvania Infant Mauling Association really speaks for itself.

That, and miscellaneous advice and useful bits.

This interview went very differently.

I warmed up by writing qsort beforehand (starting like half an hour before). I was debugging it by the time I got the call. (checking the value at one index while decrementing the other index, as it turned out. Oops). I was pretty technically able, but didn’t do as well on the nitpicky (and sometimes important) details of language questions. (are virtual static member functions legal? What are the advantages and disadvantages of inlining a function? (I had thought he was talking about an inline function declaration in the class description. Afterwards, talking it over with simon, he was thinking it was a function tag telling it to treat the function like a precompiler macro)) And I only know about ip multicasting what may be gleaned from the name, and a few minutes thought about the implications.

But I asked better questions “What skills are you looking for?” These interviews leave me feeling smart-but-ignorant. “What skills would you suggest I work on developing?” Which prompted him to ask me whether I was stronger in math/algorithm stuff or language/software architecture. I responded the former, which, given his response, may save my bacon (since this is a math-heavy operations/simulation group that’s actually useful). And in responding to his question about “why amazon” I was all “location and corporate culture” and that got us into a more casual chat, where friendliness and laughter occurred.

He said if there is another interview it will be on site. Here’s hoping.

Where ‘he’ is Dean. Yeah, this question makes me uncomfortable, so it’s time to take a serious look at it.

I think he can win. Okay, in a strict logical sense, I know he can win. Say Kerry died tomorrow, heart attack, or something equally non-blameable. And, even without that absurd example, less than 10% of the delegates have been selected. It wouldn’t take even anywhere near as dramatic a lead as kerry held over dean in iowa & new hampshire for the remaining 90% to give dean the nomination.

I do think Dean’s chances aren’t as good as Kerry’s. In addition to those who, prefer Kerry for what they believe he will do, there are those who want to be on the winning team (heard about several from Luke and others in Phoenix, though I ran into none myself), and those who think Dean’s rallying yelp in Iowa makes him unelectable (though, I bet these same people think that the lack of evidence supporting WMD’s don’t do nearly as much to damage bush’s chances. Perspective, people?)

On the other hand, Kerry had to mortgage his house to finance his campaign. Dean has not. Dean has an enormous network of volunteers. Some are wacky college students. Some are also settled parents, retirees, political campaigners, and a wide variety of other sorts. Be wary of generalizations.

I hope that the unlikely happens, and I am willing to work to shift the probabilities as much as I can. My vote will go to Dean. I encourage you to vote your conscience. Look at what the candidates have actually done in the past. And, if such things are important to you (though I don’t think they should be as important as the other), compare the record to their claims as to what they will do.

And, no matter who gets nominated, I will vote for the democrat. Even Leiberman. That having been said, it is unlikely I will do anything more than vote, should Joe get the nomination (monkeys, flying, my butt, you know how it goes). I’m not sure about Kerry. But, a cursory examination of his record leads me to believe I would be less inspired to campaign for him than for Dean. For whatever that’s worth.

I cannot fairly, and therefore will not, lay responsibility for the consequences of the mismatch between my expectations and reality primarily on the shoulders of others. If I convince myself that what I want to happen is what is probably going to happen, that’s my responsibility. Only if someone else deliberately misleads me can I place blame at their feet. Resentment under other circumstances is simply not appropriate. Disappointment, perhaps, but not resentment.

Being mature sucks sometimes, but welcome to reality. =)

Well, I’ll be having the second technical phone interview with Amazon (and the second technical phone interview of my life) tomorrow at 10am. Later tonight, perhaps post gymnastics, or tomorrow I will recount the tale of a really smelly busride, and much canvassing for dean, with some pictures.

So, I had a good time this weekend. Things that were key to the goodness of the weekend: Hanging with and catching up on our lives. Wish we’d had more time, but the time we had was great. He has mellowed, matured, and stayed the same. The other fabu thing was meeting Luke at the very beginning. Like, before we got on the bus, and having him as traveling companion for over 24 hours of busride. We probably played at least 15 hours of euchre, and it seems I’m now a good player. Yay. =) Hopefully we’ll be getting together later this week. Hopefully this will also help with the restless inability to sleep. =) G’night, folks.